In honor of the national holiday that coincides with this issue of NU, we thought we’d serve up a feast of
items about which P&C pros (and NU’s
editors) can be thankful.

And if your families are anything like
ours, going around the table on Turkey
Day and asking for reasons for thanks
nets answers both serious and (hopefully)
humorous. So we offer our list in that same
inclusive spirit.

J No Hurricane Horrors:
not to dismiss the very
real (and very far inland)
damage caused by Irene,
but this year’s wind season
was relatively benign—a
hugely welcome respite
after an especially destructive spring.

J A Risk-Ready City Saves
Countless Lives: A big
thanks to all those city
officials and others in

Joplin, Mo., who so
successfully hammered home the
message of tornado preparedness to its
citizens. Considering the mind-blowing
power and size of that May storm, the
fact that thousands weren’t killed is a
testament to the municipality’s excellent
mitigation strategies.

J 10 (Mostly) Terror-Free Years: While isolated
and tragic incidents have occurred, we have
gone a full decade with no large-scale terrorist attacks on our soil. So a bipartisan “thank
you” to Presidents Bush and obama.

J Rising Risk Managers: Thanks, in part,
to disasters both man-made (financial
meltdown) and natural (Japanese quake/
tsunami and its supply-chain implications), the concept of enterprise risk
management has never been more top of
mind in the C-suite—and the stature of
risk managers has never been higher.

Photo by Thinkstock

J Spitzer Spiked: The specter of ex-Gov.
Eliot becoming a major TV star—and
using his popularity to launch self-promotional investigations into the insurance industry—was exorcised when his
Cnn TV show was mercifully cancelled.

J Telemetric Technology: While driver-track-ing devices have been around for years,they finally seem to be reaching a tippingpoint in consumer acceptance this year.We’re thankful for what should yieldmore refined data for assessing rates—and,hopefully, safer roads.